The Black Baroness (46 page)

‘Not yet,’ she gasped. ‘I beg you not to sign that paper yet.’

The German in the dark lounge-suit took a step forward as though about to lay a hand upon her, but Gregory placed himself between them and stood there scowling at him.

‘Sire,’ Erika hurried on, ‘if you once put your signature to that paper you will go down in history as a traitor and a coward. You mustn’t do it—you mustn’t! If you cannot face the obligations into which you have entered you must let others do so for you.’

Leopold turned to stare at her. His face looked old and haggard, but his mouth was now set in a hard, wilful line that his entourage knew well as marking the pig-headed moods to which he was often subject. For a moment he remained silent, then he spoke:

‘I know perfectly well what I’m doing. This is my business—my responsibility. You and your friend …’ The rest of his sentence was drowned in the roar of a bomb.

Erika had gone round behind the desk and was close beside the King. As the bomb crashed she had been fumbling in her handbag. Suddenly, her blue eyes blazing, she pulled out a small automatic and thrust it at him.

‘Here,’ she cried. ‘Rather than betray your Allies, it is better
that you should blow out your brains; and if you haven’t the courage to do that I’ll do it for you.’

Gregory heard her words but he was still facing the Germans and had his back towards her. He never knew if she was actually threatening the King with the pistol. At that instant, out of the corner of his eye he saw the curtains move. The Black Baroness stepped through them and in her hand she, too, held a pistol.

Even as Gregory sprang forward it flashed twice. Erika screamed, stood swaying beside the King for a moment, then fell right across him.

Gregory swung round in an agony of fear. He was just in time to see her fail before the two Germans flung themselves upon him. He stalled one of them off with a glancing blow across the face; but the other closed with him and for a moment they struggled wildly. There was a trampling of heavy feet; the sound of the shots had alarmed the armed sentry on the door. Thrusting the Baroness aside he dashed into the room and, covering both Gregory and the German with his rifle, yelled at them to put up their hands. Flushed and cursing they relaxed their holds. Erika had lost consciousness and the King now stood with her limp form in his arms.

‘You’ve killed her! You’ve killed her!’ he screamed hysterically at the Baroness. ‘I’ll have you shot for this.’

She had slipped the automatic back into the pocket of a little silk coat that she was wearing and she curtsied as calmly as though Leopold had offered to take her in to dinner.

‘As it please Your Majesty,’ she said in her soft, musical voice, ‘but when I came into the room I saw Madame Rostedal threatening you with a pistol and I was under the impression that I had saved your life.’

‘That’s a lie—a lie!’ roared Gregory. ‘You shot her deliberately, because you knew that she was trying to persuade the King not to sign that accursed paper. But I’ll deal with you later. For God’s sake, somebody get a doctor!’

Ignoring the threat of the sentry’s rifle he strode across to Leopold. Almost snatching Erika from the King’s arms, he carried her over to a sofa, where he knelt down beside her to see if she was dead or only badly wounded. There were two little round holes in her breast that were oozing blood, and as he knelt there staring at them there came the drone of a fresh
flight of German bombers. The King, now overwrought beyond endurance, yelled at the sentry:

‘Get out! Get out—and fetch a doctor!’ Then swinging on the Baroness. ‘You, too, get out, I say. Perhaps you meant to save my life—perhaps you didn’t—how do I know? But get out of this room—get out,
all
of you!’

The Baroness bobbed again and withdrew without any sign of hurry, while the sentry ran to get the King’s doctor; but the two Germans did not move. The one who looked like a diplomat pointed at the paper on the desk, and said: If you will sign that now, sir, we can take it with us.’

The building shook as a new stick of bombs rained down, this time on the village. Seizing a pen, the King scrawled his signature, flung the pen down and shouted above the din: There! Take it! And for God’s sake stop this ghastly bombing!’

‘At once, sir.’ The German bowed stiffly as he picked up the paper. ‘We can get a message through to our headquarters in about ten minutes.’ His companion also clicked his heels and bowed, then they both marched from the room.

The King took out his handkerchief, mopped his perspiring face and walked over to Gregory.

‘How is she?’ he muttered.

‘Not dead—thank God!’ Gregory murmured. ‘But I’m afraid for her—terribly afraid. Both bullets got her through the left lung and it’s on the knees of the gods as to whether she’ll live or die.’

A moment later the doctor came hurrying in. He made a swift examination and said: ‘We must get her to bed at once.’

‘That’s it,’ nodded Leopold. ‘That’s it; do everything you possibly can for her. I shall be leaving in half an hour; this place has too many awful memories for me to stay here a moment longer than I have to, but I wish you to remain. Don’t leave Madame Rostedal until she is out of danger or—or …’ he trailed off miserably.

‘Thank you, sir,’ Gregory said quickly. ‘But by your recent act you have altered the whole situation; the Germans are now the masters in this part of Belgium. The Baronne de Porte heard what Madame Rostedal said to you. That will be reported; if she lives the Germans will take her into custody and directly she is well enough they’ll execute her. If she can possibly be moved I must get her away before they arrive here; so if you’re
leaving yourself I should be grateful if you would have a car and chauffeur left at my disposal.’

The doctor shook his head. ‘Even if she survives she won’t be fit to be moved for several weeks.’

‘Never mind!’ snapped Gregory. ‘That is the least that His Majesty can do for her.’

Leopold nodded. ‘Certainly. Doctor Hobenthal, please to give orders that my ambulance is to remain behind with you.’

Two servants were summoned. They fetched a tall, threefold screen, which they placed on the floor near the couch, then they laid Erika gently on it and using it as a makeshift stretcher carried her from the room. The doctor had gone ahead and Gregory brought up the rear of the little procession; just as he reached the curtain he turned. The King was now alone and they faced each other across the room as Gregory said:

‘I understand why you did what you have done, and I am not without sympathy for you. It was quite plain to all of us that in your hour of trial you were not great enough as a man to bear the strain that fell upon the King—but the world will not; understand; and for all the years that are left to you your name will be held in contempt by all decent people.’ Then with bowed shoulders he stumbled after the stretcher-bearers who carried the dear, still, white-faced figure that was more to him than his own life.

All through the night he sat by Erika’s bedside while a hospital nurse, who was now in attendance, waited at its foot and the doctor tiptoed in every hour or so to make a new estimate of the patient’s chances. She was out of her physical body and attached to it only by the slender, silver cord, the breaking of which means the difference between sleep and death. It was impossible to say if it would snap and she would never be able to reanimate her physical form or if that tenuous, spiritual thread would hold and she would once again open her lips to smile or sigh.

When morning came there was no change, but the doctor and nurse could not persuade Gregory to go to bed, or even to lie down. As he sat there he was not thinking of anything—his brain seemed numb—but he felt no need of sleep and sat on, unmoving, as the hours drifted by. The air-raids had ceased by the time they had got Erika to bed and the King had departed with his entourage a quarter of an hour later, so it was now very silent in the Château.

Shortly after midday Erika opened her eyes and moaned. The nurse sent a housemaid running for the doctor. For ten awful minutes Gregory waited for the verdict. Then the doctor said:

‘There is nothing to tell you, my friend, except that now she has come round she stands a fifty-fifty chance. We shan’t know which way matters will go for at least another twenty-four hours, unless she has a sudden collapse, so I insist that you must now go to bed.’

Gregory agreed quite meekly, but with Erika’s temporary return to semi-consciousness his own mental powers came back to him and he wondered if Kuporovitch had survived the air-raids of the previous night, so he asked the doctor to send somebody to find out; then he undressed and got into a bed which had been made up for him in the next room.

He awoke at ten o’clock that night and found that somebody had put a dressing-gown on a nearby chair for him, so he got up, put it on and went in to see if there was any news of Erika. He found a different nurse, and Kuporovitch looking extremely woebegone, in the room, but the nurse had nothing fresh to report about Erika’s state, so he beckoned to Kuporovitch and they went outside to converse in whispers.

The Russian was suffering from such an appalling hangover that he could hardly think coherently, but he said that directly he had heard what had happened he made up his mind not to go to Paris yet; he could not desert his friends at such a time.

Gregory was glad to have his company and very grateful, but he pointed out that now that the Belgian Army had surrendered the Germans might be entering Ostend at any hour. Kuporovitch shrugged his broad shoulders and said that, after all, the Germans had nothing against him, so he had nothing to fear from them. On the contrary, it was Gregory whose life would be forfeit if he were captured. Gregory knew that well enough, but wild horses would not have dragged him from Erika’s side. All the same, he was extremely anxious to know how long they had, so he sent Kuporovitch off to pick up what news he could.

The Russian was away for about half an hour. When he returned he said that there were still a few officers of the Staff downstairs, who had told him that they did not think that the Germans would be in Ostend until the following afternoon. He had also arranged about a bed for himself in the now almost
empty Château, and after partaking of a scratch meal with the doctor they went to bed about midnight.

Having slept his fill that afternoon and evening, Gregory got up several times during the night to inquire about Erika, but the nurse had nothing new to tell him. Early on the Wednesday morning, however, Erika became conscious for longer spells and was in great pain.

At eleven o’clock Gregory saw the doctor, who said that he thought that the patient now had a 3 to 1 chance of recovery.

‘And what will it be if we move her?’ Gregory asked almost in a whisper.

The doctor gave a little shrug. ‘If you were to do that the odds would be the other way; a 3 to 1 chance of death. I know the difficulty you are in but I cannot possibly take any responsibility for her life if you move her so soon.’

Gregory then had to make the most difficult decision he had ever been called upon to take. If she were once caught behind the German lines he knew that with all his ingenuity he would never be able to get her through, semi-conscious and at death’s door as she was; and he had not the least doubt that the Black Baroness had already reported her to the Gestapo for endeavouring to prevent King Leopold from signing the request for an armistice. Within an hour of German troops arriving on the scene Grauber’s men would have her in their clutches, her real identity would soon be discovered, and when that came out there would not be one chance in a thousand of her escaping execution when she was well enough to walk to the headman’s block.

It was that mental assessment ‘once chance in a thousand’ which decided Gregory, Twenty-five chances in a hundred were infinitely better, so he must take this horrible risk even though by his own decision he might bring about her death. Turning to the doctor, he said:

‘If she remains here the Germans will execute her for certain. Therefore she must be moved. Will you ask one of the servants to pack up some cold food for us from anything that remains in the larder and make arrangements for us to start at twelve o’clock.’

The Royal ambulance was a spacious and thoroughly up-to-date affair so there was ample room for the two nurses to travel inside with the doctor while Gregory and Kuporovitch sat beside the driver. With deliberate slowness they crawled along
the coast-road back to Ostend and through it towards Nieuport and Furnes, making no more than ten miles an hour, and even less where they struck a bumpy piece of road. At Nieuport they pulled up and the doctor spent some time in a telephone booth. He came back to say that every hospital and nursing-home in Furnes was crowded with British wounded but that some friends of his had agreed to take Erika into their private house.

They proceeded on their journey, arriving at Furnes shortly after three o’clock. The doctor’s friends were a Monsieur and Madame Blanchard, a plump, prosperous, middle-aged couple, who received them with great kindness and did everything in their power to make the party comfortable. Erika was carried up to a bright bedroom hung with chintz, and the doctor and nurses were accommodated in the house. But there was not enough room for the others so it was decided that Gregory, Kuporovitch and the driver should sleep on three of the stretchers in the ambulance, which was housed in Monsieui Blanchard’s garage.

All things considered, the doctor thought that Erika had sported the journey well, but one of her wounds had begun to bleed again, and he told Gregory that moving her had set her back to a fifty-fifty chance. That night she grew worse; from a slight internal haemorrhage, and Gregory was once more driven almost crazy with anxiety as he sat at her bedside all through the long hours of darkness.

It was not until midday the following day that the crisis had passed and during that afternoon and evening she took a decided turn for the better. On the Thursday night, for the first time since reaching Furnes, Gregory was able to crawl into his stretcher-bed and sleep.